


summer

by fugues



Series: zexal au meme [6]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 01:34:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fugues/pseuds/fugues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If he’d known back when he was five what befriending Thomas would lead to, Ryoga’s pretty sure he would have run a mile the moment he first saw him, eight years old and sporting an impressive black eye - from hitting his face on a table after Michael had tripped him up - and a snotty nose and bloodshot eyes from crying over the same thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	summer

**Author's Note:**

> from august, for the zexal au meme. #6, summercamp.

If he’d known back when he was five what befriending Thomas would lead to, Ryoga’s pretty sure he would have run a mile the moment he first saw him, eight years old and sporting an impressive black eye - from hitting his face on a table after Michael had tripped him up - and a snotty nose and bloodshot eyes from crying over the same thing. Except, okay, yeah, he’d been five, the little kid at camp who was too cool to make any friends, and the staff had kind of pushed them together, and honestly Ryoga had thought Thomas might be kind of cool. Not that that had lasted more than about a minute - if that - but, you know,  _other people_ had thought it was cool that Ryoga had a friend who was three whole years older, and so long as Thomas didn’t get to speak to them much and ruin the illusion then, yeah, that was pretty cool and he’d been able to put up with the whining and the clinging and the overall  _lameness_ in exchange for that, sure.  
  
Unfortunately, Ryoga  _hadn’t_ known back then. So he’d befriended Thomas like the staff had wanted, and Thomas had been his cool older friend except not actually cool at all, and back when Ryoga was five and six and seven the fact that Thomas was kind of lamely clingy hadn’t even been all that terrible so long as he could keep it in private. Because, yeah, okay, he’d gotten kind of homesick at first and Thomas had been warm and also lame enough that Ryoga could feasibly claim that he’d just been allowing the hugs and stuff to shut him up.  
  
Except then there’d been the first year without Thomas at camp, and he was going to be the cool kid with no friends again and if Kaito had been around again he was going to beat him in a (stick) fencing match when he  _hadn’t_  been ill all winter and spring, and maybe he’d have even let that kind of cutely enthusiastic kid Yuuma and Yuuma’s little friend Alit tag along with him sometimes.  
  
And then Thomas had gone ahead and turned up, nominally to visit Michael except for the part where, to Ryoga’s knowledge, he hadn’t so much as said hello to Michael before turning up in Ryoga’s dorm. He’d turned up in Ryoga’s dorm and - despite having a bed set up in Michael’s dorm - insisted that he wanted to sleep _there_ , which had basically translated to ‘sleep in Ryoga’s bed’. Where he’d proceeded to drape himself over Ryoga like a ridiculously warm blanket - especially considering that, you know, _summer_ \- and Ryoga had woken up in the middle of the night with Thomas’s face pressed into his and an uncomfortable wet patch on his cheek where Thomas had _drooled_ on him which, ew,  _gross_.  
  
At least he’d had the satisfaction of getting to see Thomas fall all the way from the top bunk when he’d shoved him out of bed.  
  
(Ryoga kind of misses bunk beds in his life, just for that particular joy)  
  
And, god, Ryoga’s pretty sure he should have known even by then that Thomas wouldn’t be put off by something like being on a different continent. Thomas had whined and - as Michael tells it - thrown just about the biggest tantrum ever, and he’d insisted Ryoga  _had_ to visit,  _had_ to keep in contact, but somehow he’d still breathed a sigh of relief when the Arkwrights were away in England, somehow he’d still been surprised at the flurry of emails he’d received from the moment Thomas was gone.  
  
He’d visited. Once. After the constant emails - of which he’d responded to once,  _maybe_ twice a month, and never to the most recent one - had gotten insistent enough for him to give in, only to be greeted by a Thomas who was still just as pathetic and  _grossly_ over-excited to see him, who’d grabbed his hand and insisted that they could share a bed again. Which, uh, okay great except that Ryoga had been nine and he hadn’t  _wanted_ to share, he’d been old enough to not  _need_ to share the bed, so thanks but no thanks, Thomas. To which Thomas had gotten the dumb wobbling-bottom-lip look that Ryoga had been so used to even after so long and fine, _fine_ , so he’d given in and shared and Thomas had at least had the decency to keep the drool on the pillow while Ryoga was there.  
  
(Ryoga sighs, because, yeah,  _then_ he’d been decent about his gross drooling)  
  
So after that he’d not gone back, and it had been three years before Thomas had turned up in front of his house, having grown out of his baby fat and unfairly attractive at fifteen years old but still really, really grossly pathetic and whining about how Ryoga hadn’t visited him again, about how Ryoga hadn’t answered any emails in three months. Which, okay, most people would take that as a hint - but most people aren’t Thomas Arkwright, sure - but Thomas  _hadn’t_ , Thomas had still turned up looking for him and telling Ryoga  _I was worried, dammit!_ and it had been gross and pathetic but sort of touching in a really annoying way. And Ryoga had shrugged off because um, okay, what had Thomas actually  _expected_ , and then Thomas had gotten annoyed and stormed off with a  _fine, then, I can see when I’m not wanted!_  
  
Which, okay,  _sure_ , whatever you say, but it hadn’t been like Ryoga had had time to make the comment before Thomas had sulked off anyway.  
  
Not that the break from him had lasted. It had been, what, two hours - if that - before he’d been outside Ryoga’s window, and he’d called out and Ryoga had ignored him so apparently he’d decided to toss a stone up in case Ryoga hadn’t heard, or something. Ryoga could have warned him against that if he’d known, considering the dry rot in the window-sill, except that, yeah, ignoring him, so he’d heard the stone hit and then the cracking noise and then Thomas’s yelp, because apparently a chunk of wood hitting you in the face from the first floor  _hurts_ , the more you know.   
  
It had scarred, because this is Thomas and so  _of course_ it had scarred. And Thomas had turned up again with a stupidly-large dressing over his cheek and then again and again once the dressing was gone with a ragged, gross scar that should have ruined his looks but somehow - and Ryoga’s still pretty sure Thomas had managed it just to be irritating - made him look even more unfairly attractive.  
  
And Ryoga had felt kind of guilty, never mind the fact it had hardly been his fault that Thomas was so pathetic, had it, so he’d given in and let Thomas keep hanging around, despite the impact it had on his already-terrible social life.   
  
(case in point, Ryoga remembers, there had been that party at the Arkwright house for Michael’s fifteenth, and the invitation had said plus one and he’d figured, you know, chance to have an excuse to make Thomas leave him alone a little, so he’d asked that green-haired friend of Yuuma’s from school for lack of any other girls he’d ever actually shared two words with besides his sister and she’d patted him on the shoulder and told him  _don’t be silly, Shark, you can’t take a girl to your boyfriend’s brother’s birthday party!_  and Ryoga could have killed Thomas then and there)  
  
Still.  
  
It hasn’t been  _all_ bad, Ryoga will admit - though actually scratch that he  _won’t_ admit that, at least not outside of his own mind and barely even then. Because for all the lameness Thomas really did grow up unfairly attractive, even if he’s still gross and pathetic and  _really_ , there’s nothing at all  _actually_ attractive about him - besides the face and the voice and okay no not getting into it - that shouldn’t be entirely ruined by his personality.  
  
And at twenty-four he should probably have managed to curb the drooling, Ryoga thinks to himself with a sigh of resignation, glancing down at the wet patch on the chest of his pajama shirt.


End file.
